What makes you stand out?
What is your USP? That stands for unique selling proposition.
If you had a pet store, why would someone want to buy aquarium fish from you when they can get them for less from the store that delivers the fish to their house? When you compare yourself with others in the same business what makes you unique? What do you do that is above and beyond in your business?
Take for example, a window washing business. If you model your business after everyone else you saw washing windows, your business would look like everyone else’s.
20 years ago, I started a window cleaning business and my unique selling proposition was that I was a respectable middle-class person that people could trust in their homes. I knew that if I focused on commercial businesses it would be too cutthroat for me. So I narrowed my focus to residential customers.
It’s not necessary for you to do something radical. It may be only a small change that will distinguish you from the crowd. For example, when Steve Jobs came up with the idea for the iPhone, PDAs had been on the market for quite a while. But the small change that he made by adding a phone to a PDA made Apple a fortune.
Steve Jobs is a master at determining what makes his products unique. This is worth taking the time to ask yourself and really dig deep to determine what makes you unique in a crowd.
Here’s a little exercise that might help.
Make a list of 25 products that are unique today and have replaced products from 20 years ago.
For example, vinyl records were replaced by eight track tapes. Eight track tapes were replaced by cassette tapes. Cassette tapes were replaced by CDs. And today CDs are soon to be replaced by digital recordings like iPods and MP3 players.
Then ask yourself what makes these new products uniquely better in the customer’s eyes than the old product. And do this exercise for every product or service or opportunity on your list of 25.
I’d love to hear your comments and observations so please share below and forward this blog post to your friends and associates.
Here’s to making it happen,
Mark A. Sinclair
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P.S.S. You can read the answers to the first 2 question here.
